What is the best way to hook up audio/video from my my laptop computer to an AV receiver. My laptop provides 5.1 Dolby or 'DTS' surround sound from the S/PDIF out port (mini jack). Could I just hook a digital rca plug from the laptop to the digital rca(coaxial) input on my av receiver for the audio and connect an s-video cable from the laptop to one of the s-video inputs on receiver?
What is the "S/PDIF out port (mini jack)"? It cannot be the same as you would use for the "digital rca plug from the laptop".
Which laptop, by the way? DD AC-3 and DTS decoding by a laptop is news to me. Surely that takes place in the receiver?
Puninske
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It is a fairly new Sager 8887. There technical people said that the mini plug acts the same as a RCA plug. So the included patch cord plugs into the side of the laptop with a mini plug and the other end of the patch cord is a RCA plug. They said to use a digital coax from the patch cord RCA to the digital coax input on the receiver. The Sager apparently does decode DTS or AC-3. It has been an incredible laptop.
Yes, that is right. It's a mini jack type S/PDIF, but the signal is the same, so you can plug the RCA directly to your receivers coaxial input. Video goes easily with the s-video cable.
If you decode DTS or DD on the laptop, you'll have to use the analog outputs. If you use the digital out to passthrough DTS/DD-signal the decoding will be made by the receiver (certainly better quality that way).
Puninske
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Posted on
landroval, I am not sure what you mean? I have two minijack outputs for audio. One is the headphone and the other is the one I mentioned earlier. Is the headphone jack analog? Would I still connect to the digital coax input on the receiver?
Okay, first you'll have to understand the difference between decoding and passthrough. When the player (the laptop, PC, DVD-player) does the decoding it unpacks the digital DTS/DD stream and converts it to analog 5.1 format. Then it will be transferred via 6 analog cables to the amplifier where the signals will be amplified and then played by the speakers. If the player just passes the stream through in a digital format it will go in one digital optical/electrical cable to the receiver where it is decoded to 5.1 different signals wich are then amplified.
So what I believe is that your laptop can pass-through the digital signal, but it cant decode it, well not in multichannel anyway. That would require 5.1 analog out (3x stereo minijack).
What you want to do is to plug the minijack -> RCA cable from the laptops digital minijack to the receivers digital coaxial input RCA. That way you will get the digital stream (apparently from DVDs) from your laptop to your receiver, and then listen to it through your speakers.
From the headphone jack you can get stereo sound in analog (amplified) format, which is useless with your receiver. The digital out will do the same better and more.
Puninske
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Posted on
That clears that up. Thanks for the help landroval
So the laptop does not provide DTS/DD, which I guessed but did not know for sure. I can't see an application for a DSP on a laptop. Maybe if you had surround-sound headphones...